Historiography

In one sense, a historiography is a collection of histories. A historiography of the English Civil War might constitute no more than a list of different pieces of historical writing about this period. However, historiography is more normally used to describe what could be also be called 'history of historiography', where writings of previous historians are surveyed and critiqued. This kind of historiography has been criticised for being merely a litany of where past historians have gone wrong. Instead, it has been posited, we should look at historical works from the past not in terms of what they ought to have said, but instead to examine why they appear strange to us, and why they were convincing at the time. Historiography is also seen by some to cover the study of the historical method (how do we research and write history), though others would see this as being part of the philosophy of history.